All Over the Place!

A short entry featuring some of the latest additions to pass over my painting desk and into GHQ. They are a really eclectic mixture, reflecting the new 'paint when and what you fancy' approach that I mentioned a couple of Posts ago now ~

Empress Miniatures AZW Boer & Mounted infantry horseholders. Dog by
Redoubt Enterprises.

Pulp Figures' Drawing Room Detectives', minus Miss Marple who figured
earlier in a VBCW context.

Highland Coos ~ by Gripping Beast I think.

FRW National Guard unit by Foundry Miniatures.

A closer view of my rendition.

The head of the column.

A Brigade Miniatures British officer.

Finally, what am I painting now? Why, Dixon Miniatures' ACW Reb infantry, the 10th Georgia and Redoubt Enterprises' F&IW French High Command to complete the roster of Big Men.Back to the future it seems!

"The Bradshaw, Watson, there's not a moment to loose!"

Sue and I were in the local Garden Centre having lunch today and after our meal we went for a wander to see what was on offer, in my case for any of my projects in GHQ that need additions ~ that's all of them really of course! I'd been reading on LAF about trains in wargames and had remembered some toy trains I'd seen in other Garden Centres and Charity shops and wondered if our local facility had any...

In fact there are two types: the 4-4-0 with coal tender and the 0-4-0 Tank Engine. They look vaguely British/Continental to me I have to say but at £5.99 a box I thought them worth a punt.

As you can see they make up a decent sized train for our games and, as I'm not too fussy either, over a wide range of periods I think. The train and carriages are slightly wider than the 00 gauge flexitrack I have, but I don't mind that; they don't have to run anywhere on their own after all. I'll leave that to the layout in the loft, at least for now. The figures you can see are Pulp Figures 28mm. A couple of closer shots ~

28mm figures for scale - they fit the cab even!

With 'Fat Controller'!

Now, many of you in my situation might be tempted into all sorts of repainting and kit bashing, but not me. Why, you ask? Well, I no longer take games to shows, as I said recently, and this will do for me just fine as it is, although the track will be based on MDF when Phil has a mo! I see it featuring in games in the 1940's Operation Zeelowe/Blandings setting,the VBCW in Wolverhampton and S Staffs, in Holmes games, in the Old West, since I'm not that fussy, and even in Rhanzlistan and points East! Purists will have a seizure, but,' its my game' as they say. Total cost? £17.99! Available in three colour schemes: green, red and blue to suit all tastes. Additional benefit: there's a spare engine for my grandsons to play with on the floor ~ they come with light and sound effects you see.  "Quickly now, Watson! If we hurry we can make the 4.55 slow service to Blandings Parva!"

Move along the bus!

I've been successful in a couple of eBay auctions in the last week! Rather unusual for me as I don't like over paying for things on the whole. Amongst my successful bids have been, not one, but two 1/48th Corgi horse drawn omnibuses! Given that some were priced from £79 on the site I was really chuffed to get mine for a total outlay of £39 including postage and packing! That works out at about £15 each for the models. See what you think anyway ~

That brings my vehicle collection for the game to five now: the two omnibuses mentioned here; two prepainted carriages drawn by two and four horses respectively, which I got at a local Toy Emporium a while back, and which are shown in the two pictures below; and the Warbases Hansom Cab which I'm working on occasionally.
The omnibus is photographed straight out of the box in front of a run of Terraced Houses by Oshira Models. While the prepainted folk are a tad larger than the wargames figures for the game, they will do for me. As its a game we'll play occasionally over a year I'll not waste time and effort repainting them, they will do! Though I may base them just to protect the more vulnerable small pieces like the brakes.

"Reach me the Bradshaw, Watson!"

Partizan in the Gloom ~ Part the Second

As promised earlier today the additions to the Lead, and MDF, Pimple. From Trent Miniatures three Austrian Infantry Battalions of 1793-1795, for my Wars of the French Revolution project, two Fusilier and one Grenadier battalions, together with some artillery crew and officers ~

Some of the extra officers allowed me to add to my three command bases for the Austrian part of the project. The main Allied Army Command features two mounted Front Rank Austrian commanders originally, to which I've now added two Trent Miniatures Austrian Officers ~

Similarly, I've added more figures to my Infantry Brigade Command base. I hope it will look the part when its painted ~

Finally, to command the Austrian and Allied Cavalry, a Front Rank Austrian cavalry general ~

I've ordered some more figures from Duncan at Trent Miniatures, to be collected at Derby Worlds show on the Sunday: some Austrian Dragoons, one of whom will figure alongside the last figure on the Command base, and some Hussars who will be joining the French ranks in due course.
I also bought a heap of MDF bases from Warbases, as I'd run really low after rebasing several armies this year! I also bought one of their Hansom cab kits! Phil popped over today and foolishly offered to make it up for me ~

There are no instructions, but we downloaded a picture from the Warbases site and Phil set to on the construction. An hour and a half, and much tutting, later ~

I can say that it goes together quite well, once you can identify which part goes where, often by trial and error we found. It needs to be done at one sitting, using PVA to keep it flexible, which of course poses some problems for handling the whole. It looks good though I thought. I have a Dixon Miniatures stagecoach horse and a driver to add later on when it advances to being sprayed for painting. If you are feeling that I took advantage of Phil, don't worry too much. After lunch he thrashed me in an ACW battle! More of that in due course...

The Great Detective ~ progress report

Despite some new glasses I've found that painting 28mm figures has caused some tiredness in the eyes of late, so I decided to switch to something altogether larger, namely my buildings and ephemera picked up at Salute from Oshiro Models for my Great Detective pulp style games. For those of you who've not come across this before on my Blog, its simply a pseudo-Victorian setting for Pulp games, using our tried and trusted rules, Astounding Tales. The figures are mostly from Foundry { old and newer Victorians} and Ironclad. The central 2' x 2' board which houses the urban core of the game marries up, in my mind anyhow, with the harbour and cemetery boards from the 1920's pulp Gangster games. I decided to see how the game might look in action, even though I've work still to do on several areas, so here are a few pictures to give a flavour of what it might look like ~

A general view from the harbour area

Isambard Kingdom Bykleigh explains his latest design...

Market Street ~ self evident really

Sales of an altogether different nature...

Market Blandings Cycle Club outing

Lord Rawnsley arrives to consult Holmes...

Josiah Robinson's Empire Works

Castle Street

I'd be interested in any feedback from visitors, so do feel free to leave a comment or two if you'd like. My next job will be to paint the roads and pavement areas to help it all blend in nicely. Each group of buildings will be mounted on some 2mm MDF then so that some groundwork bits and bobs can be added to taste. Pop back later in the summer to see the finished article.

The Great Detective ~ update

A few shots of the progress I've made recently with the Oshiro Victorian buildings. I'll combine them on the tabletop with the existing Dock tile and Cemetery tile from the Pulp set up. I'm waiting on two more buildings from James: a two storey shop front and a small pumping station. A general overview in period look ~

The local industry: Josiah Robinson & Son, import & export to the Empire. The walls, from Hovels, will need repainting before I finish a base for this piece ~

St Editha's Mission - to Seamen & Fallen Women - and an Ironmongers ~

The Ironmongers' window display ~

Two shop front buildings: a butcher and the Britannia Inn ~

The butcher's window display - downloaded from the net {and resized} after a long search. The inn's windows are greaseproof paper ~

A row of terraced houses ~

The advertising boards, like the shop window displays, are the result of long trawling on net searches. As I don't plan any interiors for the buildings this time around, I thought a few window displays were in order. I still have to make the shop front name signs.
When all is done I have to solve the problem of back yards for the buildings and a cobbled texture for the roads, but all that will have to wait now for 2014...

Generals and Gentlemen

I have a few minutes to spare between preholiday tasks, so I thought I'd share some of the things I've been painting up over the past couple of weeks. A while ago I rebased my ACW collections on MDF bases, which I think makes figures even as ordinary as mine look better! I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, during this venture that I had not got enough Rebel Command bases if I fielded the whole Army! Strange, I'd never noticed that before, so perhaps I had used more figures per base in the process and so found the Army short of Generals!
I've always enjoyed painting Dixon Miniatures ACW figures, as a glance at any game of mine on this Blog, or its predecessor website, will readily confirm. I could have ordered them from the firm through the post, but Spirit Games in Burton on Trent stock the range and I wanted to see their new shop, so off I went to pick the figures myself: an old fashioned joy I really miss: trawling through boxes of single figures to get the combination I really want! So, without rambling on any more, here they are ~

Stonewall Jackson and his staff. {If I had a wish it would be that Trevor would redo his horses using the lovely Ebob masters, I do find painting these a bit of a chore.}

A Division Command base this time, smaller base and only two mounted figures ~ it helps us old folks keep track on the table of who's who!

Finally a Brigade Command base, smaller again and with only one mounted figure. I've also completed a new Cavalry Brigade Command base and an overall Cavalry Command base featuring JEB Stuart and his staff, but they need some basework before they can appear here. Finally, from the much maligned Foundry Victorians, a Gentleman's Shooting Party for The Great Detective games.

I'm going away for a short holiday now, so I doubt there'll be anything new here now until next month. Still, plenty to revisit in older posts if anyone gets withdrawal symptoms...

The Discovery of Diablium

I've been tatting for a while now with a pack of Wargames Foundry Victorians which I picked up for £5 on a visit to the store in Nottingham earlier this year. They were entitled something like Victorian Scientists, just one pack at the back of a stack on one rack in the store. I've not seen any on subsequent visits or at shows, so whether more sets exist I don't know. I bought it even though at the time I had little or no idea what I'd eventually do with it: I guess we've mostly all been there though at some time. Anyway, I've decided it'll make a nice Objective Marker in both Rhanzlistan and The Great Detective games.
The set contained two figures, two scientific gizmos, a two part telescope and a wooden crate. Without more ado, I present Professor Cohx and Major Moore, RE, an important scientific/practical duo in games ~

The shiny black stone is going to be a meteorite in the games, which will prove to be the source of a new element, Diablium, a source of untold clean power, much coveted by the Major Powers and Criminal Masterminds alike!

For any purists out there, Professor Cohx is kneeling and Major Moore is overseeing the 'machinery'. You get a better shot of the Diablium in the second picture. At Derby this weekend I got a few more odds and ends for Rhanzlistan, mainly a Tiger Miniatures pack camel train, two camels and a driver for £4.00, my kind of price! I also paid rather more for some cattle, a donkey and some goats from Empress, somewhat less for a dog relieving himself from Redoubt!

The Game's Afoot...

I've been collecting and painting various figures and vehicles, for what seems like an age, for a planned 'Pulp' style series of Sherlock Holmes themed games. The figures have come mainly from Foundry's ranges, where their newer Victorian range are currently £5.00 a pack if you can visit the shop, and Ironclad Miniatures. The latter do a nice range of 'unusual' steam powered vehicles, but I've also sourced some horse drawn ready painted plastic coaches from a local Antiques Market, at £5.00 each a steal at the time, and used Dixon Miniatures stagecoach horse for the carriage teams..
What has been holding the project back, apart from funds obviously, has been my indecision when it came to the choice of buildings. Ideally I wanted something to have a 'life' through to 1940 for our Blandings/Operation Sealion games too. I had almost decided to buy some of Sarissa's MDF buildings, but was held back by the price really. In the end I decided on the buildings from Oshira Models, having seen them often in games featured on the LAF threads and finally in the 'flesh' at Salute.
I had thought that they too were MDF constructions, but when I collected my first from James at this year's Salute I was surprised by the weight of the box. They are in fact made from a laser cut acrylic, which appears to be clear but has been very lightly sprayed grey. The parts all seemed to dry fit really easily and the level of detail is quite exquisite, so when my second purchase arrived in yesterday's post I decided to assemble one to see what they would look like. Well, you know how it is folks: one became two; two became three and so on...

As I hope you can see from this photo, I plan to use the buildings in conjunction with my existing harbour and cemetery boards, which feature in my 1920's Pulp Games. Oshiro's buildings are modular, with additional floors and two types of roof structure being available in addition to the two floors that are standard in the terraced houses. There are also additional frontages to allow houses to become shops and a pub.

Besides houses and shops there are already small and large factory buildings ~ the small one is in the left foreground of the first picture, while in the left distance of the same picture, you can just see the same building with an ecclesiastical twist, a different facade  turns it into a mission or chapel.

The enlarged photo of the small factory shows that the method of assembly is very similar to that of the more familiar MDF buildings, such as those I assembled for my Old West project from Battleflag, though using superglue as a bond rather than PVA. The roof of each building comes with a sheet of thin card precut slates, like the shingles you'll see on the western buildings in earlier posts. That will be my next phase of assembly before each building can be airbrushed in the dark red colour I've chosen as the base colour. The latter will have to wait until July when I come back from my holiday, as will the decision about the extra buildings I might buy to complete the board layout. I'd quite like a railway viaduct, such as featured in Overlord's 1970's games, also seen on LAF, but I'm not sure about that yet. More as and when on this project. In the meantime I guess it will be some roofing...